He bit his lip. By Jove, the working men ought to hear this! It would be a good thing if they could hear it all over the country. Priests were priests all the world over. He would have it in the newspapers in some form or other.
And Norby? He might send out as many priests as ever he liked. He should go to prison anyhow. Wait till the day after to-morrow!
EVERY evening lately, Ingeborg Norby had sat and read the Bible to the pensioners in the little house. The pensioners were four in number, the dairymaid and the two farm-servants, who were all between seventy and eighty years of age, and had been in service at the farm for more than half a century; and the blind tenant farmer, whom Norby had taken in, so that he should not go to the workhouse.
In the little room lay the bedridden dairymaid; and in the larger room sat the two white-haired farm-labourers and speculated on various matters. They smoked, moved from one chair to another, and talked together chiefly about their various illnesses. The blind man for the most part kept his bed.
From the large house nothing was seen of these four persons. Even Norby seldom went to see them; but he kept them supplied with clothes and tobacco, although they all had money in the bank.
This evening the birch-wood was crackling in the stove, and the lamp shed its light upon the long table; and Ingeborg sat at the door between the two rooms and read so that she could be heard on both sides.
When she had finished reading, she repeated the Lord's Prayer and sang a hymn, in which the two old men upon the bench tried to join. When this was over and she was about to go, one of the men said:
"There will be an inquiry the day after to-morrow," said Ingeborg.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the blind man from his bed, while he scratched himself.
"Hasn't that there Wangen confessed yet?" murmured one of the farm-labourers, shaking his head sympathetically.
"No!" sighed Ingeborg, adding: "May God turn his heart!"
"If he'd only been wise enough to confess at once his punishment would have been lighter," said the blind man, still scratching himself.
"He may have confessed to God," said Ingeborg. "But the Bible says that if any one wants to do God's will, he must go and be reconciled to his brother. I'm sure if Wangen had come and asked father to forgive him, father would have forgiven him."